


feel a little warmth

by ceramize



Series: afterimage [2]
Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Domestic, Established Relationship, Friendship, Gen, Gift Giving, Holidays, Identity Issues, Introspection, Long Walks Home, M/M, Post-Canon, Street Fairs, but in a very new and flustered way, implied/referenced gueimei and luciheri, true love is being reminded of them by a cool rock on the ground
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:07:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26146894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceramize/pseuds/ceramize
Summary: “I know what a Christmas tree is, Galo,” Lio says after a bit, because it’s cute when Galo struggles, and Lio has his needs. He knows for the most part, anyway – he once saw a drawing of one on a postcard, but didn’t realize people actually went to the trouble in real life.Lio rediscovers a love language.
Relationships: Heris Ardebit & Lio Fotia, Lio Fotia & Gueira & Meis, Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Series: afterimage [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1875835
Comments: 12
Kudos: 99





	feel a little warmth

**Author's Note:**

> this takes place a few months after [build a little home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23955244), but more as its companion than as a direct sequel, so feel free to read them independently of each other ^^ 

The first thing Lio remembers is _light_. It brushes over his scabby palms, his tear-swollen cheeks, dancing against the shield of his screwed-shut eyes until he opens one to a sight he couldn’t have dreamed. In every color he can name and more, a riot of stars and fire surrounds him, chasing the tilt of his head and the lift of his hand, suffusing his body with strength. 

The world has not been welcoming to him, not from the start. There is so little he knows about it, and yet this much he understands: the laughter he hears is not of this one. He reaches out, and the fire coils around his arm and into his chest.

 _We love you_ , says the light. _You will never be alone_.

Lio comes to in the hollow blue of early morning. He counts the flutter of the curtains with passing cars, curling and uncurling his hands, trying to refill the hollow spaces. He thinks a lot about before, but rarely about the beginning.

When he regains his body awareness, he turns on his side, feeling a blanket slip off his hip and tangle hopelessly between his calves. It turns out that he moves a lot in his sleep, now that he has the space and the disinhibition to do so, and he’s once again hanging off the edge of the bed. Galo is turned towards him, one arm reaching across the mattress. His fingers twitch occasionally in his sleep, his brows scrunched together.

Lio moves in close, gently sets his hand atop Galo’s, and watches his face relax.

Galo is the deepest sleeper he’s ever met, but Lio’s still careful when he rolls out of bed, patting its headboard in thanks when it doesn’t make a sound. He grabs the uppermost piece of clothing draped over the desk chair – Galo’s robe, by the feel of it in the half-dark, and the way the hem of it brushes the floor as he pulls it on – and slides open the balcony door. 

The crisp morning air does wonders clearing his head. He dangles his feet over the edge between the metal railings, swinging them idly as the city raises its blinds and security gates and the sun makes its first appearance over the downtown horizon.

The rumble of the sliding door behind him is his only warning before a warm mug of coffee is deposited in his hands and a lingering kiss is pressed to the top of his head.

“G’morning,” Galo says. “We’re trying four sugarcubes today, bit of cinnamon, no milk.” 

He’s been experimenting with Lio’s coffee, with the fervent conviction that one morning he’ll find the combination that wins him over. What Lio hasn’t told him is that he doesn’t need to enjoy his coffee to like it, as long as Galo’s the one who makes it – there’s an assumption there that neither of them have made clear, just yet, an uncertainty Lio wants to dwell on for the time being. 

“It’s alright,” Lio says after the first careful sip, and then what must be the cinnamon hits.

“Did it work? I knew it!” Galo crows at Lio’s wide-eyed expression, his hand fluttering wondrously in front of his second mouthful. 

“I haven’t said anything yet,” Lio says, but it’s hard not to mirror Galo’s broad smile, and the coffee has him in a good mood.

“You coming to work? I can wait for you,” Galo says. He’s already in his uniform pants.

“Not today,” Lio says. “We’re putting in the floors at the resource center. Tell the team I’ll miss them, though.” It’s hard standing up and keeping his coffee balanced, but Galo steadies him by his elbows and lets him usher them inside.

“You know we’ve got our hands tied, but otherwise I’d say it could go way faster with a couple’a mechs,” Galo says. They’ve both been itching to get back into action, but there’s a surprising variety of work to be done now that the old kind of firefighting is out of the picture. “Then I’ll see you tonight!”

“Yeah, tonight,” Lio says, a bit dazed from the smacking kiss Galo plants on his cheek. “Don’t drive too fast.”

Galo gives him a blinding thumbs up, and then he’s off to the races, out the door and clattering down the stairs.

Lio’s hands hover over the bright red uniform waiting innocuously in the bottom drawer, before moving to pull out some heavy-duty clothes for today’s construction work. He’s a full-fledged Burning Rescue member in all but name, at this point, but part of him still isn’t ready to make that final leap. His responsibility has always been to the Burnish, and now that what that means is shifting at every passing moment, he feels stretched thin, casting out all his lines for anything that can keep him feeling useful.

In his own time, then.

“Oh no you don’t, Fotia,” Kyeri says, singsong, lifting the mop right out of Lio’s hands. “You’ve done more than any of us today. And I know you’re not gonna accept that ride home, so really, you’re doing us a favor by leaving before it gets dark out, eh?”

“There’s no arguing with you, is there,” Lio says. He pushes the bucket toward Kyeri in surrender, brushing the wood dust off his shirt. 

“Not a chance,” they say, nose in the air, and just in that moment it’s almost like they’re on the road again. “You’ll be in next week, right?”

“I will, but call me if there’s anything you need before then, too,” Lio says, shrugging on his coat. It’s a bit heavy by Promepolis standards, even for the winter – and laughable by Burnish standards – but it’s just one more thing to adjust to. “Everything’s really coming together, isn’t it?”

Lio did actually intend to stay until later, so he takes the longer way home, the one that takes him past the performing arts center and the prettiest metro stations in the city. When the sound first registers, he takes it for a faulty HVAC system, or a passing car radio. Then he turns the block toward a small plaza, and the tinny brass-and-bells melody swells into the background of an open-air holiday market that sprawls across the center of the park. Without thinking, he turns through the ribbon-adorned gates, drawn in by the lanterns hanging from stall to stall and the smell of candied fruit and pastries.

From the inside, the market is a world of its own. He walks slowly so he can take in the handmade quilts and blown-glass flowers and tiny wooden ornaments, not quite daring to touch. A busking violist improvises over the holiday songs that had first gotten his attention. Conversation flows freely around him, families and couples absorbed in the festivities and each other, and he feels, at once, completely present in the moment and like he’s watching it all from a great distance. 

“They’re really cute, huh?” a voice cuts in, closer than expected. Lio startles and looks down, first, at a row of pastry chicks he’d apparently stood in front of for conspicuously long enough, then up at the beanie-clad woman manning the dessert stall. 

“They are,” Lio agrees. If they weren’t edible, they’d be right at home with the little parade of rotund animal figurines over the mantel at home – he can already picture Galo’s look of wide-eyed delight when he sees these. “What are they?”

“The chicks are our most popular,” she says, taking one out of the display and breaking it neatly in half. “It’s got a toasted pastry shell, with bean paste filling. Here, try a bite.”

Lio takes the proffered piece, and it crumbles as easily in his mouth as it did in her hands. The bean paste is nearly too sweet, but in a natural sort of way, earthy and creamy, and he wants to keep savoring it long after it’s gone. It’d pair well with coffee, the way Galo takes it, to balance the sweet –

“I’ll take a set,” he decides.

“Of course!” she says brightly. “Would you like it gift-wrapped?” 

He nods automatically, though it isn’t until he’s back on his walk home, the sun well and truly on its way out, that he really _looks_ at the neat paper package in his hands. It’s wrapped twice around with glittery twine, and he gets a strange rush of happiness and guilt, like he’s holding a secret.

The short of it is that Lio has never needed much for himself, but he’s always liked to give. It’s difficult to have things only to drop them and run at a moment’s notice, or to destroy them, leaving no trace, but he’s no stranger to the comfort others can find in a small luxury or a reminder of home. The pastries he could explain away for either reason, but he’s inexplicably hung up on the fact that he bought them with an entirely different motive altogether. To give to Galo, sure, to see him smile, to share a moment, but somehow it keeps coming back to Lio. No matter now he looks at it, the gift seems simple, impractical, not even particularly personal, not in any way that he can understand. So the anticipation in his throat, then, the content in his chest – what’s that all about?

He puzzles over it, worrying at the paper wrapping, until he opens the apartment door and his senses are overwhelmed with the scent of curry and freshly chopped onions.

“I’m home,” he calls. 

“Welcome back!” Galo says from the stove, his back turned as he carefully scrapes the cutting board over a bubbling pot. “I thought I’d just get this started, but I got way into it again...”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lio says, carefully depositing the pastries beside a stack of magazines and mail on the table. He washes his hands in the kitchen sink and dries them on Galo’s apron, pulling him in by its pocket to kiss the corner of his mouth. The weight of the day, bad and good alike, lifts off his shoulders like it’s nothing. “It smells great – is there anything you need me to do?”

To his credit, Galo only sputters for a moment before putting him to work peeling carrots, and everything falls away until it’s just the two of them in the kitchen, working with their hands, their carefully coordinated dance. What could Lio possibly need that isn’t right in front of him already?

“Maaaaan,” Gueira says when they’re finally released to the cool night air, stretching his arms above his head so hard it sounds like every bone in his body pops at once, “if there was one thing I could do again – just one thing. I woulda turned twelve feet tall and scared the _shit_ outta those bureaucrats.”

“Really?” Meis asks. “Not setting the first thing that mildly inconveniences you on fire?”

“That’s what I’d do next, of course,” Gueira says. “One usually, y’know, precedes the other.”

“You said _one thing_ ,” Lio says –

“What is this, gang up on Gueira day?” Gueira complains. “I’m offerin’ solutions here!”

“– but I’m with you on that,” Lio finishes. He’s almost convinced that the reconstruction committee gets together without them and brainstorms new ways to be an absolute pain – he knows he’s grown more patient, he’s done the work, but with them, he can only go so far without giving in to violence.

“Fuckin’ vindicated,” Gueira gloats.

“I’ll show you vindicated,” Meis says, and then they’re pushing at each other one-handed and just this side of too rough on the sidewalk behind Lio, their other hands still clasped and swinging between them.

It’s still strange, not being with his Mad Burnish at all times, no matter how often Lio gets to see them. But for them to have their chance at a quiet life together, like he does with Galo, is more than he could have dared to ask, not so long ago.

“Hey, stop, it smells like – fresh bread?” Meis says, abruptly ending the fight.

“Yeah, and barbecue,” Lio says, wondering.

“‘s from over there, I’ll bet,” Gueira says, pointing down the street at a glowing row of street carts and booths. “I’ve been seeing these pop up all over the place.”

“Maybe we should keep going,” Meis says, uncharacteristically hesitant, but Lio can read the look in his and Gueira’s eyes better than anyone.

“C’mon, let’s get something to eat,” Lio says, grabbing Meis’ elbow so they form a chain and pulling them across the street. 

Between the three of them, their pocket change nets them each one of the chorizo sandwiches they’d smelled, plus a huge tub of sweet rice ball soup and a handful of coins to spare. The market is busy for a weeknight, set up with carnival games for the abundance of kids running around the stalls, a kind of liveliness that Lio can relax in. 

“Hey boss,” Gueira says in his Bad Idea voice.

“Not anyone’s boss,” Lio says reflexively, though more and more often they’ve all been letting it slide.

“You see that?” Gueira says, pointing at one of the games. It’s by far the most visually impressive of the lot: no less than ten rows of empty glass bottles, lined up on rickety wooden risers several feet off the ground. 

“Is this a challenge?” Lio asks.

“Let’s live a little,” Gueira says, eyes narrowing. “Try something new.”

The last kid playing takes a glance at them, throws one more ring, and books it out of there. 

“What the hell,” Meis says, “it’s not like we’ve ever stopped and done this before.”

Lio hands the rest of their change to the teenager working the booth, and she gives them each a fistful of brightly colored plastic rings.

“Throw from behind the chalk line,” she tells them disinterestedly. “Everyone’s a winner, but the higher the row, the more winner you are, or something.”

Meis and Gueira pretty much immediately start sacrificing their own rings to sabotage each other’s throws, so when Lio steps forward it’s almost too easy. His Burnish weapon of choice was only partially for the optics, and mostly because he actually could hit his marks five at a time – this is nothing.

“You, uh,” the game attendant says, gesturing at the fully ringed top row of bottles, and then at the absurdly massive stuffed animals hanging from the chain-link fence behind the stand. “you wanna pick one?”

“I think I’ll pass,” Lio says. “But thank you. This was fun.”

“He will most definitely _not_ pass,” Gueira says, looping an arm over his shoulders, ominous aura back in full force, which is how Lio finds himself clutching a pointy-eared dog plush two-thirds his own height the rest of their night out. 

“Say, doesn’t it kind of look like somebody?” Meis asks, giving one giant blue paw a tug.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lio says curtly, and tosses his hair a bit to make sure it covers the burning tips of his ears. 

It’s quiet when Lio gets home. He takes three cautious steps, just barely avoids falling over the mess of shoes in their entryway, and flips on the lights, throwing everything in the room into stark relief. With no one and nothing around him to focus on, the laughter and relaxation from earlier fades quickly into memory. He knows, truly, that he’s surrounded by connections he can rely on, but in moments like these it’s still hard, remembering to trust in them.

At this hour there’s nothing left on TV but infomercials and old game shows. The color and noise of it is reassuring, though, and he curls up on the couch with the blue dog, his feet tucked between the cushions, as a grainy man in a cowboy hat rattles off numbers. The studio applause washes over him in slow waves.

The sound of a jostling lock eventually startles Lio into awareness, and he all but throws himself over the back of the couch to open the door the rest of the way.

“Galo, you’re –” Lio begins. Galo’s still holding his key between his teeth, head at the level of the doorknob, arms otherwise occupied by a vaguely conical, burlap-wrapped mass. “What happened to you?”

“Oh, thank god,” Galo says, vaguely garbled, and Lio takes the key from his mouth and steps aside to let him in. He drops the bundle in the middle of the room so he can massage the back of his neck with a groan. “I thought I had it, but it’s gonna be a real holiday miracle if I can turn my head tomorrow.”

Lio looks down, and back up at Galo.

“Oh. _Oh_.”

They stare at each other for a moment. Lio cracks a small smile, and the dam breaks.

“So are you telling me why you have this?” Lio asks once they’ve collected themselves, face aching from laughter. He pulls back a corner of the cloth and an intensely piney scent fills the air.

“Right! Yeah,” Galo says. “Some families, for the holidays, they put up this tree in their house and decorate it, an’ there’s a story that –”

“I know what a Christmas tree is, Galo,” Lio says after a bit, because it’s cute when Galo struggles, and Lio has his needs. He knows for the most part, anyway – he once saw a drawing of one on a postcard, but didn’t realize people actually went to the trouble in real life.

“Just making sure,” Galo says. Lio waves him off reassuringly and gets a blinding smile in return. “Remi needed an extra set of hands getting a tree at the farm, since his girlfriend is – you know – so I saw this little guy and just couldn’t leave it by itself.”

The little guy in question is undoubtedly the saddest plant that Lio, who’s spent most of his life in the desert, has ever seen: barely reaching his waist, it lists to one side, misshapen and uneven branches poking in all directions and shedding an alarming quantity of pine needles at the slightest disturbance. 

“It’s wonderful,” Lio says, and means it. “How do we get it to stay up?”

After a lot of fumbling and a minor rearrangement of all the furniture in their living room, they manage to successfully prop the tree against the corner by the bedroom door. 

“Have you ever done this before?” Lio asks, arms outstretched as Galo piles a series of increasingly random items onto them – all their mantel animals, a roll of ribbon, several unmarked CDs, a wooden spoon.

“Sort of, but we weren’t religious or anything,” Galo says. He herds Lio back to the tree and starts carefully transferring the objects onto the branches. “My grandma, she didn’t want me to miss out on these celebrations, so we tried them all. None of it really stuck through the years, but everything was fun with her.”

“She sounds like a good person,” Lio says quietly. “What were you celebrating?”

“She’d say it was cold out, and the days are short,” Galo says, winding the ribbon around the tree, his eyes never leaving Lio’s. “We should have a little beauty as long as we’re here.”

They step back from the tree, and in the low light, with his head tilted just so, Lio can almost envision it in ink and paint.

Once a month, as part of his provisional employment with Burning Rescue, Lio meets with Lucia so she can test him for residual warp drive side effects. He doesn’t mind in the slightest – Lucia is great company, and better him than anyone else to be reminded of it all on such a regular and immediate basis.

The station is closed up for the night, not that he can really tell from inside the lab. Any trace of natural light is entirely blocked out by towering metal shelves and various prototypes, the glow of computer monitors filling the room in hues reminiscent of an underwater cave. 

It’s not unusual for Lucia to be late. At this point, he’s well acquainted with assembling the folding cot and setting out her equipment before she arrives, but slouching on the foam cushions, kicking his feet so they’ll occasionally bump against the linoleum, can only get him so far beyond that. Galo should be home by now, as promised, because he knows this boy would otherwise be sitting outside for what’s looking to be at least an hour or two.

A metal push bar echoes through the lab. Lio looks up, and something heavy and sudden drops through his chest.

“I’m sorry for the wait,” Heris Ardebit says nervously. “Lucia was called in to a conference last minute, so I’m filling in just for today, if it’s alright with you.” 

Lio just stares blankly for a moment. Despite everything that’s happened since, despite the work she’s done and the courage she showed and the loved ones they share, it’s still hard to see her without remembering the cold wonder in her eyes, when she’d discovered what Burnish bodies could do.

“That’s fine,” he manages, and looks away.

“Okay,” Heris says. “Thank you. I know this isn’t ideal, but I’ll be quick.”

She takes his vitals in stiff silence, shooting him grateful glances when he raises his arms and stands, unprompted, when she needs it. 

“You said Lucia had a conference?” Lio asks, finally taking pity on them both. He’s lying back on the cot as she scans him with some kind of cobbled-together handheld device that chirps at regular intervals. 

“Oh, right! She does, they called her in an hour before it was due to start,” Heris says. She looks more animated than she’s been the entire time Lio’s known her, like she’s genuinely happy to talk about it, not just relieved by the out he’s offered. “It’s a materials engineering convention, so the organizers wanted her to discuss how she’s reappropriated Freeze Force’s old tech. This isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened, actually, and it’s not even the shortest notice she’s gotten, but – I’m sorry, I’ve said a lot, haven’t I? You didn’t ask for all that.”

Lio hums noncommittally.

“I just,” Heris starts, and then falls silent for a moment. “This is strange, right? I’ve barely seen you and there’s really only one thing we should be talking about.”

She helps him into a sitting position, and clamps another scanner loosely onto his arm. On the worktable, a small device starts printing a readout.

“I know, but we don’t have to,” Lio says. “I’ve talked about it so much, more than I thought I needed – with Galo, with your sister, with my therapist – and I’m working through it. I really am. And I hope you are, too.”

“Lio,” Heris says, eyes wide.

“I can’t fully explain it, but it was nice,” Lio says. “Hearing you talk about what's normal for you.”

“I think I know what you mean,” Heris says. “It’s – I know life has changed for everyone, but we were at the heart of it. My actions counted for far more than any single person’s should have. That’s kind of isolating, isn’t it?”

“I guess we feel more similarly than I thought,” Lio says, and maybe the slight smile they share will eventually give way to something less fraught.

Heris nods, once, and looks down to idly adjust the scanner. 

“Even then, there are things I still need to put into words,” Heris says, just when Lio thinks the conversation has ended, “and so many things I still need to do, but… we could talk, sometimes. If you’d like.”

“Yeah. That’s okay with me.”

The paper readout grows long, forgotten.

Lio’s favorite walk is the one he takes most often, from the metro stop to home. Divided from the main road by a wide swath of grass, the tiled sidewalk follows the river, just an iron rail and a sloping concrete drop away. The city lights reflect onto thin sheets of new ice, casting long patterns in the water.

Heris was right: for a long time now, he’s felt a kind of loneliness. Not just from this essential piece of himself that he’s lost, but also because the part he took in all these changes, the outcomes he’s caused, are his to bear and his alone. 

And yet, at the same time – all around him, more often than not, these strange, small, joyful things.

His shoe catches on something loose in the sidewalk. With a clattering sound, it bounces a few times and rolls into the grass, and Lio feels his way to a smooth stone the size of his palm. Squinting under the dusty orange light of a streetlamp, he registers a repeating angular pattern against its dark grain – a weird find, for the middle of a major landlocked city, and kind of wonderful and impossible for it to exist in the first place. He thinks with a sudden clarity that he really wants Galo to see it. He wants to hold on to these sights, the feelings they give him, he wants to share them and love them back, because they mean something to himself – _him_ , whoever he is, not who he needs to be. 

The apartment is dim and peaceful. Several covered bowls sit innocuously on the table, and the desperately fond feeling building in Lio’s chest reaches its breaking point when he finds Galo asleep on the couch with his arms crossed, legs flung haphazardly over the armrest. 

“Galo,” he whispers, nudging his side.

“Nn,” Galo mumbles, reaching out toward Lio before his eyes have even opened. It’s so endearing that Lio has to throw his arms about him and hold tight – there’s simply no other option.

Without letting go, Galo carefully sits up and pulls him in. Lio buries his face in the junction between Galo’s neck and shoulder and breathes deep. The clean smell of laundry powder and ever-persistent smoke envelops him, and he feels safe and real.

“Ow,” Galo says, muffled into Lio’s hair, as they’re trying to shift into a more comfortable position. “What’s that?”

“What’s what – _oh_ ,” Lio says, pulling back reluctantly so he can retrieve the offending object – the stone he’d picked up – from his front pocket. He feels the familiar urge to hesitate, to explain it away, but he tamps down the embarrassment as best as he can and opens his hand. “It reminded me of you.”

“Really?” Galo asks, eyes shining, and all of Lio’s remaining doubts dissipate like a morning frost. 

“And the dog,” Lio says, going for broke, nudging the plush in question with his foot, “and the tea we had this morning, the cakes – see what you’re doing to me? I’m seeing you in everything.”

Lio can feel the way Galo suddenly startles in his arms, like he’s remembered something important.

“Hang on just a second, will you,” Galo says, and before Lio can react he’s leaning dangerously off the couch, straining to reach for something against the wall. For a second it feels like he’s going to overbalance, and Lio clambers on top of him just in time to prevent them both from tipping off the cushions.

Then – the room illuminates in a sea of hundreds of tiny lights in every color, strung together on wires draped messily around the perimeter of the ceiling, down around the windows, like sparks rising in the night sky. It’s an intimately familiar sight, and as fundamental to himself as it is, he can’t help feeling as though he’s seeing it for the first time.

“I put them up just before you came back,” Galo says. “They reminded me of _you_.”

Lio looks at them, entranced, until he can’t anymore, and when he shuts his eyes and presses his forehead to Galo’s, they’re still there like a vision, like memory, like they’re going to stay.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! i'm like dropping hints that i miss the big city, also it's been a hundred degrees here every day for a week


End file.
